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Even bond investors, who typically hate inflation, wouldn't mind a little more of it.

Bondholders of all stripes entered 2013 on high alert for incipient signs of inflation or rising interest rates, which erode the value of bonds. This was supposed to be the year when the fledgling postcrisis economy began to take flight, lifting prices along with it, and when the bond market, if not the Federal Reserve, might finally start pushing rates higher.

Investors loaded up on debt designed to guard against such inevitabilities. Debt like Treasury inflation-protected securities, or TIPS, which take standard government bond yields and adjust them to compensate for the rate of inflation, as well as floating-rate debt like bank loans that let yields adjust to prevailing interest rates.

Early in the year, as stocks surged and economic data improved, these looked like winning bets. Less so lately. The consumer-price index, a key inflation barometer, fell by 0.2% in March, with prices up only 1.5% over the past year. Commodities like gold, copper, and oil have sold off this month. The U.S. labor force grew much more slowly than expected last month. Growth in China's gross domestic product slowed last quarter, and Japan's outsize monetary-easing program, specifically designed to galvanize inflation, hasn't really worked yet.

"One thing that is abundantly clear of late is the market's near-term inflation expectation has notably declined," wrote Ian Lyngen, rates strategist at CRT Capital.

That declining expectation has undercut the TIPS market to the point returns are trailing those for normal Treasury bonds for the first time in five years. A Thursday auction of $18 billion in five-year TIPS saw the weakest demand in over four years. Based on the so-called break-even rate, or the difference between TIPS yields and normal Treasury yields, expectations for inflation over the next decade fell last week to 2.4%, the lowest level since November.

"Clearly there's been less interest in owning inflation protection lately," said Chris McReynolds, head of U.S. Treasury trading at Barclays. "We were seeing fairly elevated break-evens coming into the year, and since then economic data haven't turned terrible but it's turned soft."

McReynolds pointed out that when the inflation break-even rate falls, the yield curve for regular Treasury bonds typically flattens, meaning less difference between long-term and short-term yields. That didn't happen last week, which he said could indicate that the sharp drop in inflation expectations was an overreaction.

The 10-year Treasury yield fell to 1.703% Friday, from 1.723% a week earlier.

Bank loans have held up better, returning 2.5% so far this year, according to Standard & Poor's LCD. Their sub-investment-grade ratings mean they tend to offer decent yields regardless of rate moves. But investors who rotated out of junk bonds into loans to hedge against rising rates missed the 3.6% rise in junk bonds this year.

EVEN CORPORATE BONDS have performed oddly against this backdrop of subdued inflation. According to Bank of America Merrill Lynch, every time inflation expectations eased significantly in the past several years, corporate bonds—as gauged by credit spreads—have weakened meaningfully. Except for this time, when corporate bonds, especially speculative-grade, have continued to outperform, as investors keep piling into the highest-yielding bonds they can find.

What can set these inflationary matters straight? Gains in real wages, says Barclays' McReynolds. That's certainly on the Fed's wish list, but so far efforts to revive the labor market keep falling short of expectations, too.